multifaceted
by anankes
Summary: [Life in a Ferris wheel; glimpses from the heights above and below. The two of them are as changing as the seasons and stalwart as mountains; they are a study in dynamics. Clashing colors of black, white, and green.] A series of drabbles for FerriswheelShipping. Written for the Pokemon Fanfiction Challenges forum.
1. child

a/n: written for the Pokemon Fanfiction Challenges forum (OTP Week Challenge)

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**child** - winter - 496 words - T - Family

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December. Winter all around.

They watch over their newborn baby, their fixation almost reverent as they examine him, hold him, try to convince themselves that it is _real_.

"Look at him," she whispers, holding the tiny bundle of cloth closer to her chest. She is in awe. "So perfect."

"Every inch," her husband agrees, reaching out a slim finger. The baby grasps it in one of his tiny hands, cooing. The green-haired man grins.

"He's a strong one. He gets that from you, probably." Draping an arm around his wife's shoulder, he adds, "It was probably all that hiking and climbing up mountains on your journey. It finally paid off."

She grins. "You think our child's going to be an adventurer?" she asks, carefully stroking one of its chubby cheeks. Already, the baby has begun to get drowsy, eyelids fluttering. It is still unused to activity, even minor things like holding a finger.

He shrugs, smiling, and offers to take him from her. She relents and gives her husband a chance to hold their child. Gently, he rocks the baby back and forth.

"Maybe," he admits. "Although, I wonder..."

"If he has your gift?" She laughs. "That should have been obvious enough. Did you see the way that nurse's Purrloin and the other hospital Pokemon flocked to him? Our baby's going to be special."

"He is special," N murmurs. He points. "Look, he's got your hair. Chestnut brown. Think he's going to be as curly-haired as your brother, Touya?"

Touko giggles. "Or, he could turn out like you and have to wear a messy ponytail. Only, it'll be a brown one."

"What's so funny about that?" N demands.

"Can you imagine our baby with a brown ponytail? He'll look like one of the guitarists on that route by Nimbasa City. The one that leads to Driftveil." She lets out another tinkling, bell-like giggle. "I think, if the training circuit doesn't work out for him, he could have a second calling!"

N chuckles merrily. "Which one? Electric or acoustic guitar?"

Both of them burst into raucous laughter at that, finding the notion strangely amusing. Tears rolling down her cheeks in mirth, Touko stammers, "Oh...haha...the...ha...baby...asleep..."

"Tired, little guy?" N strokes the baby's forehead before incling his head in the direction of the crib. "Come on, let's get him to bed."

The two of them stand above the cradle, N lowering the baby down onto a soft mattress. Above, a dangling mobile with Zoruas, Darumaka, and the Unovan starters Oshawott, Tepig, and Snivy quietly chase each other, the strings blown faintly by a small draft.

Touko bends down and kisses the baby. "Good night, dear," she whispers. "Sleep tight."

"Beautiful, isn't he?" Now N is the one who looks amazed. Touko, smiling a soft smile, slips her husband's hand into her own.

"Yeah."


	2. fortune cookie

a/n: for OTP Week Challenge

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**fortune cookie **- spring - 499 words - T - Romance

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Lit festively with red paper lanterns disguised as lamps, the restaurant was a center of warmth, lights spilling through the windows and into the night outside. Rows of cherry blossom trees leading up to the building fluttered, pink petals drifting free and swirling in the wind. Spring was finally here.

"Delicious, isn't it?" N murmured, spearing a beautifully sauteed mushroom and popping it into his mouth. His eyes closed as he savored the taste.

"Delicious it is. Decadent, as well," Touko replied, carefully slurping up a large mass of noodles, golden-colored beads of broth dripping from the strings and around her chopsticks. As she swallowed, she let out an audible sigh of pleasure. "We need to come here more often. As in, two times every day for lunch and dinner."

"No breakfast?"

"Sadly, breakfast is not served here. But _Arceus_, if they did..."

"Heaven on earth," agreed N, eating a crisp piece of broccoli.

"Extravagant."

"Perfection."

"An orgasmic gustatory experience."

"I wholeheartedly a-wait, did you just say _orgasmic_?"

"Indeed I did."

"An orgasmic gustatory experience," N said, rolling the phrase on his tongue. He grinned. "Such an interesting choice of words, my dear."

"A fan of wordplay, are you?" she asked, and the two of them chuckled at that. After they finished, their smiling waitress came by with the bill and a plate of two fortune cookies.

"Shall I get the bill?" questioned Touko, reaching in her purse.

"Let me," interjected N, taking the white slip of paper away and scribbling his signature onto the bottom, then extricating a credit card and laying it across the top. The waitress returned to take the slip and the credit card, leaving the two of them alone for yet another while.

"Fortune cookie?" N offered, holding one of the plastic-wrapped treats out. Touko, smiling, took it and stared at the smooth yellow lines nestled inside the wrapper.

"At the same time?" asked Touko.

"Yeah."

"One, two..." They ripped the wrappers open, removed the cookie, broke it apart, and held the slim piece of paper facing down, their eyes fixed on each other. "...and three."

"'You will fall in love with an alluring, mysterious stranger,'" Touko read, eyeing her slip with some amusement.

N stared at his. "'Eat more green vegetables. They will aid in your growth and development.'"

His girlfriend burst into laughter. "Seriously? That's what you got? I thought it would've been something romantic like mine was."

"Are green vegetables and _development_ not enough for you, milady?"

She caught on to his implications and smacked him on the arm, blushing furiously. "N, you dirty rogue!"

"Dirty rogue?" he said with a smirk.

"_I _think you're a very sexy, mysterious, alluring dirty rogue."

"Do you, now?"

Wordlessly, as though drawn by some sort of gravitation, their lips met across the table. When they pulled away, they did so with red cheeks and a slight breathlessness. Touko was grinning, as was N.

Outside, the petals danced.


	3. out of sync

a/n: revised this chapter because the previous one was shitty

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**out of sync** - mist - 395 words - T - Angst

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There is rain, going _pitter-patter_ on their driveway and winding through the grooves in the sidewalk and the soil like little snakes. Where the raindrops hit, small bursts of water rise up, like miniature explosions, that crowd together into a not-mist cloud of dense droplets.

She is awake before he is, sitting on the rocking chair in front of their window and looking out through the confines of their house. Every moment feels like being in a prison, nowadays. They are simply going through the motions of marriage like robots; out-of-sync, fundamentally broken robots missing a circuit or two that once processed love and now only processes dismal defeat. In a way, that is even worse than the anger that preceded it, because when they were angry, there was still some passion left, twisted and corrupted as it was. When she was angry, at least she was able to feel _alive_ instead of this degenerate machine that she now is.

Acceptance of the inevitable. That is what they both feel, that their trainwreck of a marriage has been granted the fortune of a small reprieve in an otherwise angry run towards destruction. This is the _lull_, the _in-between _where they can finally sort out what the hell is wrong with them before their situation goes into a full-out nuclear bomb, a toxic affair where they disguise venomous words and backhanded compliments in the guise of affectionate smiles and kisses. That will be the worst of all, she thinks, when the two of them are so depraved that they must cover up their broken-mirror relationship with tape.

But everytime someone looks in, the fucking cracks still show.

Absently, she lifts the crumpled paper card out of her pocket and examines it in the dim rainy-morning light. _Peter J. Feynmann _is printed in stark black and white lettering on the front, and underneath it is an e-mail address, a phone number, and a place of contact.

They both feel it in the air; the calm before the storm.

Mr. Feynmann, based on her resources, is a good lawyer. Trustworthy. Stalwart. Able to _win_.

And with the baby coming, delaying the conflict will only spread the infection even further.

So, at exactly 6:37 AM in the morning on Tuesday, May 3, Touko White decides to get a divorce.


	4. beneath me

a/n: for OTP Week Challenge

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**beneath me** - summer - 327 words - T - Romance

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Sunlight streams through the open windows, bright and vivid and full of life. Summer is here, and the kids are in the streets and the two of them lie in bed, their sheets a dirty rat's-nest tangle of cloth and splayed limbs.

She wakes first, blinking sleep from her long, dark lashes and turning around blearily to see her partner in bed beside her. She thinks, _I can't believe it; this gorgeous, sexy man is really sleeping to my side. This is a dream._

He wakes soon after and derails that particular train of thought with a sunny smile and messy green hair cascading all around his head, the sun catching the jade strands and turning his head into a halo.

"Hey," he says, grinning like they didn't just have sex hours ago, like the two of them didn't fuck like animals and were desperate, _needy_ for each others' touch, like he isn't completely naked (as is she) and doesn't feel ashamed.

There are no _what_-_ifs_ for him or her. There is only comfort.

"Good morning," she replies, rolling over to lay her head on his bare chest. "Sleep well?"

"Did you?"

"Yeah," Touko murmurs, running a hand appreciatively over the swell of leonine muscles that make up his body, trailing her fingers over the bulge of his biceps. "Yeah, I guess I did."

His smile broadens. "What's with the hair? You look like you rolled over and got pinned beneath me during the night."

"I should be saying the same thing, grasshead," she retorts, but laughs. "Fuck, this is so awkward. You look like you have a worse case of bed-head than I do. And you're a guy."

"Well, we can worry about bad hair days later," he responds, straddling her and pressing his lips onto hers for a quick, passionate kiss. His smiling is contagious. "After...this?"

"After this," she agrees, kissing him back.


	5. gold

a/n: written for the OTP Week Challenge

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**gold** - autumn - 216 words - T - Romance

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Autumn.

They are dancing in the leaves, red and orange and burnished gold, and they are laughing like children as they kick into the crackling piles and land amidst the heaps, hearts hammering and breath racing and cheeks red from the cold.

He places butterfly kisses on her cheeks, his touch warming her skin instantly. She wraps her arms around his neck, their scarves (green and black) splayed out all around them like puddles of color. Leaning in for a deeper kiss, she slips her hand into his coat, unfastening the buttons, and he sweeps her up in his arms (still kissing) and carries her into their house. With the smell of fall still on their clothes and hair, they fall into bed together, mouths locked, and are happy.

Later, they will lie there, propped up on cozy pillows with each other for warmth and mugs of hot cider in their hands, and they will bask in the after-sex glow, look into each others' eyes, and smile.

Little puffs of steam rise from their glasses, condensing into fluffy clouds, smelling of apples and spice and tree-leaves and love.

.:.:.

_They are dancing in the leaves, he with a scarlet jacket and she with golden leaves woven in her brown hair and everything is finally perfect._


	6. stars

a/n: written for the OTP Week Challenge

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**stars** - rain - 461 words - K - Romance

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They sit under the big apple tree with its branches and leaves, listening to the _pitter-patter _of the rain as it falls from the ash-gray clouds and strikes the ground. Fat drops plop from the leaves, spilling onto the wet grass like handfuls of marbles, shattering upon contact.

Both of them are wearing wool coats, buttoned up all the way to the enormous collars, with knitted scarved pulled around their faces for extra protection against the cold. The bench they sit on is try save for the few raindrops that slip past the tree's canopy and fall onto the wood. Every time one of the drops land onto her leg or hair or neck, she gives a smell yelp in surprise and leans into her boyfriend's embrace, and he smiles and holds her closer.

"Don't like the rain?" he teases.

"Shut up," she murmurs, burrowing into the thick folds of his jacket. "It's just surprising, that's all."

"After every rainfall comes a rainbow-"

"N, don't."

He laughs. "What? It's true, you know. It's a type of meteorological phenomena-"

"Stop. You're spoiling rainbows with science."

"That makes no sense whatsoever."

"You make no sense whatsoever," she retorts, but kisses him on the cheek. N smiles and kisses her back.

The rain clears quickly, leaving the night sky in full focus. The rain seems to have brought a sense of clarity to the world, and Touko breaths in clean, crisp air and lets out a small sigh of pleasure.

"The stars are out tonight," N notes, folding up the umbrella and standing up, stretching his long legs. Touko joins him as he points up at the tiny, twinkling beads of light.

"See, there's Andromeda. And Perseus, too." His fingers trace the constellations for her to view. "Sometimes, I think that there's something quite romantic about their situation."

"Andromeda and Perseus?" Touko scoffs. "She was chained to a rock to be sacrificed to a sea monster just because of her mother's own vanity and pride threatened to bring destruction upon her father's kingdom. What's romantic about that?"

"I was talking about how Perseus swoops in and saves her from her imminent death, slaying the sea monster and restoring peace to the land."

"Ah. Must have overlooked that part."

"You know, you really aren't one for myths, are you?"

She chuckles and grabs his hand, pulling him towards her. "Not with someone who has as weird a sense of romance as you."

Her hands slide around his neck and pull his face close. "Now, _this _is more romantic."

Her lips draw closer, and, forgetting about the stars, N tosses his umbrella down and leans in for the kiss.


	7. wild

a/n: written for the OTP Week Challenge. inspired in part by /Play a Hero False/, by (The Light's Refrain)

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**wild** - drifting - 476 words - T - Romance/Tragedy

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The two of us flew through the air astride our respective dragons; N on Reshiram, myself on Zekrom. The air whistled past our cheeks and through our air, and our eyes stung and our skin burned, but it was exhilarating. It was a feeling like no other.

We flew over his castle, over the bastions and towers gilded with dark tile and over the ramparts and broken pathways, our eyes glimpsing everything and single points all at once. We flew over the desert surrounding the League Building, the scents of dust, sweat, and sunlight thick in our noses. As we rode, the fire-bright sun dimmed, and the skies turned from sea-blue to bruise-violet and then to solid pitch-black, the moon coming up and staring at us like some great, pearly eye, iridescent and as chillingly cold as the arctic tundra.

We paid no mind to the moon or stars, though. On our dragons, we ducked and weaved through the sky, a mess of colors dominated by streaks of black and white. We were suns in motion, supernovae exploding and expanding, black holes eating a billion stars and tearing them into wire-thin strands in the dark vacuum of space. Our hair, it was in our eyes, and our hands were free, trailing behind us as the gods danced a waltz that was both inexpressibly beautiful and indescribably dark at the same time.

There was power flowing through us, power neither of us had felt before. I heard the beating of my heart with more acuity than I heard the coming of a freight train with its whistles and chugging and beast-growl on the steel tracks. I saw N, flushed and as excited as I was, and I wanted him. And he, he wanted me as well; I saw it in his eyes, in the way the moonlight turned them to pools of green.

For the briefest of moments as the dragons drew close, Reshiram spitting fire and Zekrom sparking lightning, our hands touched, and a wave of _something _passed through us, as strong as gravity keeping the planets in orbit.

I whispered, "N."

He whispered, "Touko."

We were drifting in a sea of delusion, desire, and destruction, and we loved it. It was the drug we craved, it was the high we got off of. I need him, and he needed me, and it was heartbreaking.

We were wild, then. We were the wild ones, flying into a dark tomorrow and a bright apocalypse with only the future in mind and the past far behind us. We were going out in an explosion of darkness. We couldn't stop it, so we liked it, instead.

In those flights above the world, peering down at Earth like it was a marble on a stained-oak floor, I swore that we were infinite.

* * *

_come and take a walk on the wild side_

_let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain_

_you like your girls insane_

_choose your last words_

_this is the last time_

_'cause you and I_

_we were born to die_


End file.
